“I grew up in Sydney’s inner west. I went to high school at the Newtown Performing Arts and I relocated to Byron when I was about 20. After living in Byron for a while I went back to Sydney and decided I wanted to work in entertainment. I was a Roadie in my early 20s, I’m nearly 6’ tall and quite strong and I was probably the only female Roadie I saw around. I looked up and noticed the Riggers and thought..hmm that looks cool, so I got a Rigging license. I rang around all these Gaffers as these were the days before the internet so I just kept hassling until one of them gave me a job.
I got a job with Panavision Lighting on the Matrix movies so my first major films were Matrix 2 and 3. In 2002 I moved overseas and went into television. I came back in 2004 as my Dad was dying of cancer. After he passed away Panavision found out I was in Australia so they asked me to go to New Zealand to do King Kong and Narnia. It was great, especially being the only woman who was in the lighting department. It turns out Sierra who is the place maker here at The Quad was also a Lighting Rigger as well. We are a rare breed.
I came back to Australia and I hated the TV industry here. It’s not as professional. In Europe it’s such a huge industry whereas here it’s a bit cowboy. It wasn’t my cup of tea. After a couple of burn outs I decided to study community services and move into disability/mental health. At the time of the floods I was working in that sector.
When the ’22 floods were happening my Mum was in end of life with cancer. It was just challenging going from a natural disaster and going through everything we as a town went through to going to a major city to deal with end of life with my Mum. I was really aware that I had just experienced something extraordinary.
The way the film came about is because two months after the flood I was in Sydney. For two months I watched what was happing on television. The thing that got me was the lack of understanding of how extreme the situation was. Despite the news reports people didn’t quite understand just how catastrophic it was. You can see the floods and that’s scary and horrible but you cannot quantify what you have to do afterwards. People see water and people surviving but they don’t think about how people lost their homes, their businesses, their livestock, their cars, their kids schools, their other families homes, infrastructure. Even in Sydney, I didn’t have to plan it I could go to a shop to get what I needed. It was a shock to the system.
For me I just felt that the human element had been taken out of it, the understanding of the social impacts. That’s been my primary focus on the film, to ensure that it’s not just about the main event, it’s about the rebuild and the challenges people had and are still having.
The film was fully funded by me. I left the industry 10 years ago and I said I would never work on another production unless it was my own and unless it was an important project. This is my first Directorial Feature length film. I thought it was so important for future generations to have some sort of archive to look back on that encapsulates the social impacts of the floods. Yes, there’s economic impacts, and yes, there’s infrastructure impacts. This has affected everyone so much, myself included.
When I started editing the film last year, it was raining non stop and I had to get out. I’ve moved to Murwillumbah but I’m still very connected to this community. I have property and family here. I miss Lismore but because I’ve been working on the film for so long I still feel very much a part of the community.
One big thing about working on this film is I felt I had to leave Lismore to finish it because there are some political undertones in it and not everyone’s going to agree with my viewpoint. I believe in science and I believe this is a climate disaster. I also think because of mono-culture farming, macadamia run off, there is so much silt in the bottom of the river. I say this with knowledge because my elderly neighbour Margaret Jarret who was an old time local and has since passed, her and her son said the river used to be crystal clear. You could see bull sharks if they came up but now we have a lot of farming producing a lot of waste which ends up in the river.
Although this film isn’t an investigative piece, it’s an anecdotal piece, I learnt so much about what had gone wrong. During my research I was really disappointed to realise The Liberal Government had knocked back funding to replace all the gauges. There were so many things that upset me. Even though I didn’t lose my house, when you’re not in that dealing with your own shit, you have the ability to be on the periphery and take it all in. Given that I had to go to Sydney for my Mum I had this feeling like I was in it but I had this third party perspective. That’s why that little montage at the beginning of the film of Kate Stroud, I kept seeing her on TV and thought, she is such a good advocate. I approached her because she had been so visible throughout the flood, not just advocating but making very solid, clear points, not emotive and I feel lucky that I had her on my film. The screenings coming up are fundraisers to get the film out to a wider community and into festivals.”
‘I was able to watch a preview of this film. When the River Rose is a heartfelt documentary capturing the voices of Lismore locals who lived through the devastating 2022 flood. Told through raw, personal stories, it preserves the pain, strength, and spirit of a community determined not to be forgotten. It documents the social impact of the disaster and the resilience of a town still navigating recovery—ensuring these vital stories are preserved for future generations.’